Wednesday, June 2, 2010

So this week marked the beginning of our Revolutionary War studies, and we've started it with Paul Revere's Ride. This book is from Five In A Row(FIAR), Volume III, so I didn't have to plan this lesson out at all, but rather chose which activities from the book we wanted to work on. I had big plans of making a lapbook to go with it, something I throughly enjoy doing, but time got away from me. Something about a quilt and polkadots.

Instead, of the lapbook I was going to make we're using the free notebooking resources over at Homeschool Share. (I love that place!) This works out quite well because the rest of our Revolutionary studies will also have notebook (and some lapbook) components. We'll stick everything in one notebook and be able to look back over it when we're done. The boys absolutely love sharing their work with anyone who will sit still long enough to look and listen. In fact, I recall the poor moderator who did our home visit (an Australian "thing" for being a legally registered homeschooler) literally dashing down the driveway calling over her shoulder, "Thank you boys, but I really must be going now before they send someone out to find me.."

Paul Revere's Ride is full of big words and dialect that isn't very familiar to the boys, so it was a big read the first day. There was much the boys didn't understand and Jayden was highly disappointed there wasn't much fighting in the book. Now, in the FIAR manual the suggestion is not to use all the vocabulary words because there is a very long list of them. However, I have a nine year old who loves learning new words and really wanted to understand this poem. So we attacked the vocabulary a bit differently.

This evening, while tea (that's dinner for those of you not using Aussie Speak) cooked I read the book to them and at the end of page, stanza, or break I'd explain what we'd read specifically pointing out the newer words. This opened up a world of questions and amazements and much discussion. They were especially keen to find out that I knew what a girth was and that I knew why Revere was double checking that the girth on his saddle was tightened. Tomorrow, they'll cut out pictures for the words and glue them on the notebooking paper and together we'll take turns writing down the words and definitions.

We've also decided to use the Massachusetts coloring page from Crayola. I love how they fit a lot of stuff one one simple page and the boys always have fun coloring those in. We'll be sticking that in our notebook as well after discussing each of the things on it and locating Boston on our US map. Interestingly enough Morgan has all ready put two and two together on the entire issue of the Pilgrims having come before this time in history. He was really concerned that things went from being so good to being so bad. "I just don't get why they gave thanks if things were going so bad for them!" So we had a small chat about how there were many years between the Pilgrims and the Revolution. This was also a great time for him to start with his timeline notebook (more on that in another post...)

I also found this Paul Revere coloring page at Crayola for our notebook as well. I have a nine year old who loves to color while he's listening to our read alouds. The only problem with this coloring sheet is that each time we read the quip on the bottom and get to "midnight ride" we start quoting the entire first stanza of the poem. This leads to much laughter and silliness. We might need a steadier hand then normal in order to color this picture!

I also dug out our copy of the Liberty Kids computer game. I picked this up sometime ago from one of those places that sells "free" computer games and you simply pay shipping. They tend to charge anywhere from $4 - $7 for shipping on those things which isn't too shabby. I can't recall exactly which one I purchased it from, all though I do know it was an American company. This inspired us to check out the Liberty Kids episode that was based on Paul Revere's Ride.

Not sure about Sylverster Stalone there as Paul Revere, but we enjoyed the fun take on the historical events. All though, it'd be unfair if I didn't mention that, Jayden was fully disappointed there was no fighting in this particular episode. Poor kid, he's really antsy to get to the fighting part!

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Not sure if you can get Netflix where you are but they have all The Liberty Kids episodes to watch live on the computer. We already watched them once when we studied the American Revolution and now watching them again just for fun.BlessingsDiane